From Fire to Ashes to Life
Ash Wednesday
Reflection By Scott Stoner
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
- Matthew 16:25
Living in Wisconsin, I love the warmth of a fire on a winter night. Part of the delight lies in the ritual involved in building and starting the fire. The anticipation begins as I crinkle up the paper and then place the wood, working from the tiniest twigs to the larger logs. The moment of the first spark and watching the fire catch is magical. A deep feeling of peace emerges as I settle in to watch and tend the fire for the next few hours. There is a final peace, too, in watching the last embers die out.
The next morning always brings a different ritual: cleaning out the ashes. I used to resent this messy work and would do it as quickly as possible, often causing the ashes to blow in all directions as I tried to shovel and sweep them into the ash bucket. Now, however, I approach this work as slowly as possible, mindfully placing each shovelful of ashes with the least possible disturbance. As I do this, I think back to the previous evening, giving thanks for the fire and the wood from the tree that produced these ashes and, in the process, provided welcome warmth and peace.
Ashes, like the cross, are at first glance symbols of death. And yet, as we travel through this Lenten season, focusing on healing and wholeness, we will find that God has a miraculous way of transforming the symbols of the cross and ashes into life. Remembering that we are dust on Ash Wednesday is not a message of sadness, but one of humility. It reminds us of our mortality and the impermanence of our earthly bodies. What is eternal is God’s life-giving love.
The source of all life is not our own effort, but God’s life-giving Spirit. In God’s economy, the mark of ashes in the form of a cross becomes a symbol of life. The paradox is that as we more deeply acknowledge our vulnerability and mortality, we discover a fuller life. As the passage from Matthew says: “those who are willing to lose their life for my sake will find it.”
The journey of healing and wholeness is just that: a journey. Like the journey of Lent, we can’t just skip ahead to the warmth and joy of the Easter fire. We instead start with the ashes—not to wallow in them, but to accept them and our individual and collective need for healing and wholeness.
So let’s not rush to light the fire of Resurrection too quickly. Let’s intentionally embrace the process, slowly cleaning out the ashes in our lives, and then mindfully begin crinkling the paper and placing the twigs of our longings and our lives as offerings to God this Lenten season.
And in the words of Psalm 51, which is so often read at Ash Wednesday services, may our prayer be to “create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”